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; OVEN THY 1MOUTH FOR THE DUMB, IN THE 'CAUSE OP ALL SUCH AS ARE APPOINTED TO DESTRUCTION ; OPEN THY MOUTH,
JUDGE RIGHTEOUSLY, AND PLEAD THE CAUSE OF THE POOR AND NEEDY." Proverbs XXXi. 8, 9.
VOLUME IV.
NUMBER III.
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, AUGUST, 1861.
I'RICE
ONE DOLLAR PER ANNUM.
CONTENTS OF THE PRESENT NUMBER.
The War and Slavery 497
The Rebels, the Government and the Difference between them 498
A; Black-Hero: 499
Jehn Jay's 4th of July Address 499
American Diplomacy 5011
West India Emancipation 500
Lecture by Frederick Douglass 500
Congress and the Fugitive Slave Law 502
Exciting Scene at Flushing 503
Letters from the Old World 504
The Lesson of St. Domingo 505
"The Question at the Door 507
Denmark Vesey (concluded) 508
Extract from the President's Message 511
Anti-Slavery Pic-Nic in Rochester 511
DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.
THE WAS AND SLAVERY.
We have no change to report of the moral
position of the Federal Government in respect
to slavery. As the beginning of July left us,
so the beginning of August finds us. We
are still treading the unsteady billows of
events, and walking amid the flitting shadows
■of doubt and uncertainty. Aside from the
mere compelling obedience to the laws, no
high and inflexible principle of public policy
has been announced by the Government.—
Prom present appearances, nothing is contemplated but the restoration of the country
tq_ the same condition in which rebellion and
mischief to repeat, under more favorable cir-
-cumstances, the atrocities and crimes by which
the country is now afflicted. Thus far we are
contenting ourselves with trimming off the
leaves and branches, and leaving the trunk
and roots of rebellion firmly fixed in the soil,'
ready to gather new sap, and to sprout forth
again with renewed vigor. The great army of
the North has moved into Eastern Virginia,
and the Federal arms have been victorious in
Western Virginia ; but no moral progress yet
marks the career of the Federal Government.
The political horizon is scanned with breathless suspense. Those amongst us who believe
that freedom is always right and best, and that
slavery is always wrong and worst, watch and
wait with longing hearts to see the Government stumble upoD the only true and sound
policy suggested and required by the crisis.—
That policy is nothing more nor less than the
complete and unalterable abolition of slavery,
the known cause of all our present national
troubles. But thus far we have watched and
waited in vain. When Congress voted upon
the resolution of Mr. Lovejoy, declaiing the
recapture of runaway slaves no part of the
present business of our army, we seemed on
the verge of the right path ; but when the
Government decided that no more slaves
should be allowed within the lines of our army,
and that none should follow our soldiers, the
loss was greater than the gain. This decision
evades, ignores the real issue. The Government, iu taking it, has settled nothing, but its
own moral cowardice and insufficiency. In
this, however, the Government but reflects the
mind of the people.
Self-deception is a chronic disease of the
American mind and character. The crooked
way is ever preferred to the straight in all
our mental processes, and in all our studied
actions. We are masters in the art of substituting a pleasant falsehood for an ugly and
disagreeable truth, and of clinging to a fascinating delusion while rejecting a palpable
reality. Every reflecting man knows, and
knows full well, that the real source and centre of the treason, rebellion and bloodshed
under which the country is now staggering as
if to its fall, is slavery. Every one kuows
that this is a slaveholder's rebellion, and nothing else. Every one knows that here is the
source of its power, the fountain of its motives, and .the: explanation of its purposes ;
that the measureless enormity of rebellion and
treason can be traced to no other parentage
than that ot the American slave system.—
Neither merchants, manufacturers, lawyers,
mechanics or laborers, whatever might have
been their hardships, would have turned from
the peaceful methods of the ballot box, to
the deadly one of the cartridge box, to redress
their wrongs, real or fancied. Neither of
these classes have possessed the ability, the
temptation or the disposition to perpetrate
such a crime. The peril and misfortune of
the country has been the existence among us
of ?. p"'"",".,"'d rhs,<* of irresponsible despots,
authorized tyrants and blood-suckers, who
fatten upon the negro's flesh, and draw political power and consequence from their legalized crimes, rather than from their virtues.—
Such a body are the slaveholders. Proud,
grasping, ambitious, nursed in lies and cruelty,
these men are fitted for their present infernal
woik. Feeble at the beginning, tolerated as
a necessity rather than as a right, regarded as
a transcient evil by the fathers of the Government, destined soon to pass away, something
entirely extraneous to, and inconsistent with
the constructive elements of American institutions—slavery, through various phases, but by
regular processes of development, of repeated
disturbances, and of multiplied compromises,
has naturally reached the point at which we
now see it, full of wrath and fury, covering
the land with a mantle of fire and blood. We
all see it and feel it No body doubts it, and
every body believes it; and yet the Government and people, owing to their chronic self-
deception, their cowardly spirit and want of
fixed principle, are practically rejecting what
they know to be true, and accepting what
they know to be false.
In the late Message of our honest President, which purports to give an honest history
of our present difficulties, no mention is, at all,
made of slavery. Any one reading that document, with no previous knowledge of the
United States, would never dream from any
thing there written that we have a slaveholding war waged upon the Government, determined to overthrow it, or so to reconstruct it
as to make it the instrument of extending the
slave system and enlarging its powers ; while
all here know that that is the vital and an
mating motive of the rebellion. The proclamation goes forth at the head of all our armies,
assuring the slaveholding rebels that slavery
&hall receive no detriment from our arms —
While fugitive slaves arc not sent back just
now to known rebel's, the inducement is held
out to all loyal slaveholders... that they shall
have their slaves sent back to them. While
the slaveholders do npt scruple to employ
their slaves in the work of rebellion against
the Government, our rulers at Washington
steadily refuse to accept the aid of free colored citizens in defence of the Government —
Thus do we belie and reject the issue presented to us in this contest. Thus do we refuse
to see even what it is impossible to hide from
ourselves, chat slavery is the cause of the war,
and that its abolition is the true and only
remedy for the war, and that all other remedies are but patch work, putting new wine
iuto old bottles, and new cloth in old garments, and thus making the rent worse than
before. Up to this time, slavery has lost
nothing in point of doctrine, or principle, by
the war, and no principle has been laid down
by the Government which can necessarily give
the soul-drivers of the South the least possible alarm for the safety of slavery. The impression which our Government seeks to make
upon the slaveholders seems to be that slavery is safer in,'than out of the Union.
The only circumstance which has thus .far
transpired, indicating an anti-slavery tendency
on the part of the Government, was the approval of the aclioo of Gen. Butler in treating slaves as contraband of war.-, "But even
this was but a temporary arrangement, and
was carefully left open to the most sudden
reversal. The final disposition of those already within the lines of the Federal army is
even yet a matter of painful uncertainty.—
They may even yet be handed over to the
tender mercies of the cruel taskmasters from
whom they escaped, or in some way be made
an element in a trumped up paper settlement
of the contest between the Government and
the rebels.
From every view we have been able to get
of the conflict through all the debates in
Congress, the proclamations of Generals, and
over all the smoke and fire of the battle field,
we see the dark shadow of Compromise—tha
outlines of a new bargain—by which the
slaveholders, though whipt, shall not be humbled, and though criminals of the deepest die,
shall yet hold up their heads as free citizens
and as honest men. We are doing now all
that we can to whip them without offending
their tastes or injuring their interests. History will, we think, set this down as the most
amiable and forbearing Government ever assaulted by the sword of treason and rebellion. We will not consent to the employment
of negroes or Indians in our army. That
would offend the prejudices of our Southern
traitors, and exalt these proscribed races to
the dignity of citizenship, and might possibly

; OVEN THY 1MOUTH FOR THE DUMB, IN THE 'CAUSE OP ALL SUCH AS ARE APPOINTED TO DESTRUCTION ; OPEN THY MOUTH,
JUDGE RIGHTEOUSLY, AND PLEAD THE CAUSE OF THE POOR AND NEEDY." Proverbs XXXi. 8, 9.
VOLUME IV.
NUMBER III.
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, AUGUST, 1861.
I'RICE
ONE DOLLAR PER ANNUM.
CONTENTS OF THE PRESENT NUMBER.
The War and Slavery 497
The Rebels, the Government and the Difference between them 498
A; Black-Hero: 499
Jehn Jay's 4th of July Address 499
American Diplomacy 5011
West India Emancipation 500
Lecture by Frederick Douglass 500
Congress and the Fugitive Slave Law 502
Exciting Scene at Flushing 503
Letters from the Old World 504
The Lesson of St. Domingo 505
"The Question at the Door 507
Denmark Vesey (concluded) 508
Extract from the President's Message 511
Anti-Slavery Pic-Nic in Rochester 511
DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.
THE WAS AND SLAVERY.
We have no change to report of the moral
position of the Federal Government in respect
to slavery. As the beginning of July left us,
so the beginning of August finds us. We
are still treading the unsteady billows of
events, and walking amid the flitting shadows
■of doubt and uncertainty. Aside from the
mere compelling obedience to the laws, no
high and inflexible principle of public policy
has been announced by the Government.—
Prom present appearances, nothing is contemplated but the restoration of the country
tq_ the same condition in which rebellion and
mischief to repeat, under more favorable cir-
-cumstances, the atrocities and crimes by which
the country is now afflicted. Thus far we are
contenting ourselves with trimming off the
leaves and branches, and leaving the trunk
and roots of rebellion firmly fixed in the soil,'
ready to gather new sap, and to sprout forth
again with renewed vigor. The great army of
the North has moved into Eastern Virginia,
and the Federal arms have been victorious in
Western Virginia ; but no moral progress yet
marks the career of the Federal Government.
The political horizon is scanned with breathless suspense. Those amongst us who believe
that freedom is always right and best, and that
slavery is always wrong and worst, watch and
wait with longing hearts to see the Government stumble upoD the only true and sound
policy suggested and required by the crisis.—
That policy is nothing more nor less than the
complete and unalterable abolition of slavery,
the known cause of all our present national
troubles. But thus far we have watched and
waited in vain. When Congress voted upon
the resolution of Mr. Lovejoy, declaiing the
recapture of runaway slaves no part of the
present business of our army, we seemed on
the verge of the right path ; but when the
Government decided that no more slaves
should be allowed within the lines of our army,
and that none should follow our soldiers, the
loss was greater than the gain. This decision
evades, ignores the real issue. The Government, iu taking it, has settled nothing, but its
own moral cowardice and insufficiency. In
this, however, the Government but reflects the
mind of the people.
Self-deception is a chronic disease of the
American mind and character. The crooked
way is ever preferred to the straight in all
our mental processes, and in all our studied
actions. We are masters in the art of substituting a pleasant falsehood for an ugly and
disagreeable truth, and of clinging to a fascinating delusion while rejecting a palpable
reality. Every reflecting man knows, and
knows full well, that the real source and centre of the treason, rebellion and bloodshed
under which the country is now staggering as
if to its fall, is slavery. Every one kuows
that this is a slaveholder's rebellion, and nothing else. Every one knows that here is the
source of its power, the fountain of its motives, and .the: explanation of its purposes ;
that the measureless enormity of rebellion and
treason can be traced to no other parentage
than that ot the American slave system.—
Neither merchants, manufacturers, lawyers,
mechanics or laborers, whatever might have
been their hardships, would have turned from
the peaceful methods of the ballot box, to
the deadly one of the cartridge box, to redress
their wrongs, real or fancied. Neither of
these classes have possessed the ability, the
temptation or the disposition to perpetrate
such a crime. The peril and misfortune of
the country has been the existence among us
of ?. p"'"",".,"'d rhs,